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                        Technology and Human Responsibility
    
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    Issue #111     A Publication of The Nature Institute    September 12, 2000
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              Editor:  Stephen L. Talbott (stevet@netfuture.org)
    
                      On the Web: http://www.netfuture.org/
         You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes.
    
    NetFuture is a reader-supported publication.
    
    
    CONTENTS
    ---------
    
    Editor's Note
    
    Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood
       Excerpts from a new publication of decisive importance
    
    Children and Computers: A Call for Action
       Position statement of the Alliance for Childhood
    
    DEPARTMENTS
    
    Announcements and Resources
       Alliance for Childhood -- International Conference
    
    About this newsletter
    
    
    ==========================================================================
    
                                  EDITOR'S NOTE
    
    "Mass delusion" is about the only term I know that is adequate to describe
    our society's compulsion to sink untold billions of dollars into the
    computerization of education -- against all reason and without any clear
    sense of the supposed educational need being addressed.  Every voice
    raised against the delusion has been swallowed up like a whimper in a
    hurricane.  Until now.
    
    Finally, I believe, there is beginning to sound a collective voice with
    the force and gravity to counter the delusion.  This morning the Alliance
    for Childhood conducted a high-profile news conference at Washington's
    National Press Club, and released its report:  "Fool's Gold: A Critical
    Look at Computers in Childhood".  Personally, I think this report is the
    most significant publication about computers and children since the
    delusion first seized hold of us.  You'll find some excerpts from it
    below.
    
    The Alliance simultaneously issued a "Call to Action", which we reprint
    here along with a partial list of its initial signers.  The Call concludes
    with seven recommendations, the first of which, restoring some long-absent
    common-sense to the public discussion, urges:
    
       a refocusing in education, at home and school, on the essentials of a
       healthy childhood: strong bonds with caring adults; time for
       spontaneous, creative play; a curriculum rich in music and the other
       arts; reading books aloud; storytelling and poetry; rhythm and
       movement; cooking, building things, and other handcrafts; and gardening
       and other hands-on experiences of nature and the physical world.
    
    You will find the full text of Fool's Gold (which is also available
    in printed, nicely bound form) at www.allianceforchildhood.net.  For
    further information send email to info@allianceforchildhood.net or call
    301-513-1777.  You can register your interest or support at the website --
    something I urge you to do.
    
    For some additional background about the Alliance, see NF #99.
    
    One final note:  I have never been quite so moved by a press conference as
    I was while listening in to this one.  What struck me so forcefully was
    the quiet conviction and depth of sincerity evident in all the
    presentations -- not exactly what we've learned to expect in most press
    conferences, especially in an election year.  It appeared that all the
    major journalistic organizations were represented, and you are sure to
    hear more about this development over the next few days.
    
    SLT
    
    Goto table of contents
    
    
    ==========================================================================
    
              FOOL'S GOLD: A CRITICAL LOOK AT COMPUTERS IN CHILDHOOD
    
                       Report of the Alliance for Childhood
    
    (Following are a few tidbits selected pretty much at random from Fool's
    Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood.  I am not able to
    give any sense for the development of the argument in any of the chapters
    in this 99-page report, nor for the rich variety of sources and research
    reports it draws from.  An outline of the document follows these excerpts.
    SLT)
    
    ** Children ages 2 to 18 spend on average about 4 hours and 45 minutes a
    day outside of school plugged into electronic media of all kinds.
    
    ** "We have the most sedentary generation of young people in American
    history," warns U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher.
    
    ** "My observations in schools are that drugs, crime, hostility,
    indifference, and insensitivity tend to run rampant in schools that
    deprive students of instruction in the arts.  In the process of
    overselling science, mathematics, and technology as the panaceas of
    commerce, schools have denied students something precious:  access to
    their expressive communicative beings and their participation in creating
    their own world [Charles Fowler]."
    
    ** Thomas Sherman of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
    University has pointed out that educators sensitive to young children's
    developmental needs actually try to "limit children's access to
    information by simplifying messages and sequencing contents."  Their
    intent is to avoid overwhelming children with information that is so
    outside their experience they can neither understand nor assimilate it.
    
    ** In early childhood and at least throughout elementary school, [we
    should] concentrate on developing the child's own inner powers, not
    exploiting external machine power.
    
    ** Behavioral optometrists recommend that children [in first or second
    grade] learn about letters first through direct physical engagement with
    them -- perhaps by drawing or painting the letters as big as possible.
    This takes advantage of the deep perceptual learning that coordinating
    vision with gross motor skill encourages.
    
    Expecting beginning writers to poke a letter key and then passively watch
    a letter appear on a screen ... may actually hamper the process of
    learning to write and read.
    
    ** Supportive social interactions with more competent language users is
    "the one constant factor that emerges" in studies of how children become
    able speakers, readers, and writers, research psychologists Alison Garton
    and Chris Pratt concluded after an extensive review of the literature ....
    Too few chances for such communication, if extended throughout childhood,
    may permanently limit children's ability to express themselves in speech
    or in writing, to comprehend fully what they read, and even to understand
    themselves and to think logically and analytically.
    
    ** The late Jeanne Chall, who was a leading expert in reading research,
    observed in more than 300 schools before concluding that the critical
    factor in interesting children in reading was not the particular method or
    technology but the teacher.  "It was what the teacher did with the
    method, the materials, and the children rather than the method itself that
    seemed to make the difference."
    
    ** Schools should get serious about ergonomic issues now, says Dr. Margit
    Bleecker, a neurologist and director of the Center for Occupational and
    Environmental Neurology in Baltimore...."We know that these things can
    happen with children," she says, based on the reports of children who
    injure their hands playing video games.  She expects the incidence of
    repetitive stress injuries in childhood to rise.  "It's probably a time
    bomb waiting to go off."
    
    ** Educational psychologist Jane Healy ... notes that creativity involves
    the ability to generate "personal and original visual, physical, or
    auditory images -- `mind images' in the words of one child."  But she
    adds: "Teachers find that today's video-immersed children can't form
    original pictures in their mind or develop an imaginative representation.
    Teachers of young children lament the fact that many now have to be
    taught to play symbolically or pretend -- previously a symptom only of
    mentally or emotionally disordered youngsters."
    
    ** "It's not that children are little scientists, but that scientists are
    big children [Alison Gopnik]."
    
    ** Many studies have demonstrated the relevance of what researchers call
    "sociodramatic play" -- make-believe play involving more than one
    individual -- to scholastic achievement in many subjects, including
    reading, writing, science, and arithmetic.  Studies have shown, for
    example, that make-believe and other kinds of play help young children
    learn to classify objects and group concepts in hierarchies, skills that
    have proven resistant to formal instruction.  Children also test and
    revise their immature ideas about space, time, probability, and cause-and-
    effect relations during play.  They test hypotheses, draw generalizations,
    and find creative, divergent ways to solve problems.
    
    ** [Arkansas master teacher Sheila G. Flaxman:]  "Children have never
    before been exposed to so much, so early.  Play not only allows them to
    practice with all the new concepts -- social, emotional, moral, and
    intellectual -- they are learning so rapidly as they develop, but also
    helps them make sense of, and internalize, all the stimuli to which they
    are exposed."
    
    ** Teachers report that many children of all income levels who have been
    exposed to heavy diets of television, computers, and other electronic
    media now enter kindergarten not knowing how to play.
    
    ** Studies suggest that children who engage spontaneously and often in
    make-believe tend to be proficient at solving problems that have no one,
    simple solution.
    
    ** Marilyn Benoit, president-elect of the American Academy of Child and
    Adolescent Psychiatry, has coined the term "dot-com kids" to describe the
    negative impact on children of being able to command so many entertaining
    images and messages with just a click of the mouse.  Children's brains,
    she suggests, are overstimulated by the pace and attention-grabbing nature
    of multimedia technology.  She notes the rise in diagnoses of attention
    deficit hyperactivity disorder and asks whether it is related to
    "children's constant exposure to rapid-fire stimuli to the brain."
    
    ** Nature trains all of a child's senses, and encourages reflection and
    acute observation, which later support scientific insight and precision in
    thinking.  The noise and flash of electronic media demand the child's
    attention.  In contrast, the silence and subtle beauties of the natural
    world encourage children to focus their attention for themselves.  This
    kind of self-motivated attention is critical for persisting in learning
    tasks of all kinds.
    
    Traditional cultures have long recognized the subtle qualities of nature
    as powerful teaching tools.  Among the Lakota people of North America, for
    example, children "were taught to use their sense of smell, to look where
    there was apparently nothing to see, and to listen intently when all
    seemingly was quiet [William Crain]."
    
    ** [Regarding the educational essentials discussed in Chapter 3 of the
    report:]
    
       Each supports the development of the full range of a child's human
       gifts, not just the intellect.
    
       Each is strongly supported by research and practical experience.
    
       Each was already endangered in schools before the current enthusiasm
       for computers.
    
       Each is even more threatened by the new emphasis on computers.
    
       Each is especially critical to the education of our most socially and
       economically disadvantaged children.  Likewise, when computers replace
       them, the loss most harms our most at-risk children.
    
    ** "Nearly half of the staff development courses are now basic computer
    training," observed Lowell Monke in 1997, speaking of the Des Moines
    (Iowa) Public Schools, where he was then teaching advanced technology
    classes.  "As I listen to teachers and administrators discussing
    educational issues now, as opposed to three years ago, I hear much less
    attention directed toward what is going on inside our students, and much
    more toward what goes on with the tools they use."
    
    ** There is absolutely no evidence that the lack of computer technology in
    elementary school poses any threat at all to a child's development.
    
    ** Once we recover from the illusion that technical innovations will
    revive education, the really critical conversation can begin:  How can we
    tackle the social obstacles to children's healthy development with renewed
    social commitment?
    
    
    Chapter outlines
    ---------------
    Chapter 1.  Healthy Children: Lessons from Research on Child Development
       The beginnings of life
       Emotions and the intellect
       The essential human touch
       The dangers of premature "brain" work
       Learning about the real world
    
    Chapter 2.  Developmental Risks: The Hazards of Computers in Childhood
       Hazards to children's physical health
          Musculoskeletal injuries; vision problems; lack of exercise and
          obesity; toxic emissions and electromagnetic radiation
       Risks to emotional and social development
          Isolated lives; new sage on the stage; less self-motivation;
          detachment from community; the commercialization of childhood
       Risks to creativity and intellectual development
          Stunted imagination; loss of wonder; impaired language and literacy;
          poor concentration; little patience for hard work; plagiarism;
          distraction from meaning
       Risks to moral development
       A massive national experiment
    
    Chapter 3. Childhood Essentials: Fostering the Full Range of Human
               Capacities
       Close, loving relationships with responsible adults
       Outdoors activity, gardening, and other direct encounters with nature
       Time for unstructured play, especially make-believe play
       Music, drama, puppetry, dance, painting, and the other arts
       Hands-on lessons, handcrafts, and other physically engaging activities
       Conversation, poetry, storytelling, and books read aloud with adults
    
    Chapter 4.  Technology Literacy: Educating Children to Create Their Own
                Future
       Develop the young child's own inner powers
       Teach ethics and responsibility
       Teach the fundamentals of how computers work
       Teach the history of technology as a social force
       The goal of technology literacy
    
    Chapter 5.  Real Costs: Computers Distract Us from Children's Needs
       The real costs of educational technology
       Flawed assumptions
       The politics of technomania
       The commercial blitz: a mega-scam
       The dog that didn't bark
       Children's real unmet needs
          Eliminating lead poisoning
       Other pressing needs of our most at-risk children
          Critical needs of our public schools
       A new conversation
    
    Chapter 6.  Conclusions and Recommendations
    
    Goto table of contents
    
    
    ==========================================================================
    
                    CHILDREN AND COMPUTERS: A CALL FOR ACTION
    
                   Position Statement -- Alliance for Childhood
    
    Computers are reshaping children's lives, at home and at school, in
    profound and unexpected ways.  Common sense suggests that we consider the
    potential harm, as well as the promised benefits, of this change.
    
    Computers pose serious health hazards to children.  The risks include
    repetitive stress injuries, eyestrain, obesity, social isolation, and, for
    some, long-term damage to physical, emotional, or intellectual
    development.  Our children, the Surgeon General warns, are the most
    sedentary generation ever.  Will they thrive spending even more time
    staring at screens?
    
    Children need stronger personal bonds with caring adults.  Yet powerful
    technologies are distracting children and adults from each other.
    
    Children need time for active, physical play; hands-on lessons of all
    kinds, especially in the arts; and direct experience of the natural world.
    Research shows these are not frills but are essential for healthy child
    development.  Yet many schools have cut already minimal offerings in these
    areas to shift time and money to expensive, unproven technology.
    
    The emphasis on technology is distracting us from the urgent social and
    educational needs of low income children.  M.I.T. Professor Sherry Turkle
    has asked: "Are we using computer technology not because it teaches best
    but because we have lost the political will to fund education adequately?"
    
    Given the high costs and clear hazards, we call for a moratorium on the
    further introduction of computers in early childhood and elementary
    education.  We call for families, schools, and communities to refocus on
    the essentials of a healthy childhood.  And we call for a broad public
    discussion about these critical issues.
    
    Let's examine the claims about computers and children more closely:
    
    *
    * Do computers really motivate children to learn faster and better?
    *
    
    Children must start learning on computers as early as possible, we are
    told, to get a jump-start on success.  But 30 years of research on
    educational technology has produced just one clear link between computers
    and children's learning.  Drill-and-practice programs appear to improve
    scores modestly -- though not as much or as cheaply as one-on-one tutoring
    -- on some standardized tests, in narrow skill areas, notes Larry Cuban of
    Stanford University.  "Other than that," says Cuban, former president of
    the American Educational Research Association, "there is no clear,
    commanding body of evidence that students' sustained use of multimedia
    machines, the Internet, word processing, spreadsheets, and other popular
    applications has any impact on academic achievement."
    
    The sheer power of information technologies may actually hamper young
    children's intellectual growth.  What is good for adults and older
    students is often inappropriate for youngsters.  Face-to-face conversation
    with more competent language users, for example, is the one constant
    factor in studies of how children become expert speakers, readers, and
    writers.  Time for real talk with parents and teachers is critical.
    Similarly, academic success requires focused attention, listening, and
    persistence.
    
    The computer -- like the TV -- can be a mesmerizing babysitter.  But many
    children, overwhelmed by the volume of data and flashy special effects of
    the World Wide Web and much software, have trouble focusing on any one
    task.  And a new study from the American Association of University Women
    casts doubt on the claim that computers automatically motivate learning.
    Many girls, it found, are bored by computers.  And many boys seem more
    interested in violent video games than educational software.
    
    *
    * Must five-year-olds be trained on computers today to get the high-paying
    * jobs of tomorrow?
    *
    
    For a relatively small number of children with certain disabilities,
    technology offers benefits.  But for the majority, computers pose health
    hazards and potentially serious developmental problems.  Of particular
    concern is the growing incidence of disabling repetitive stress injuries
    among college students who began using computers in childhood.
    
    The technology in schools today will be obsolete long before five-year-
    olds graduate.  Creativity and imagination are the prerequisites for
    innovative thinking, which will never be obsolete.  Yet a heavy diet of
    ready-made computer images and programmed toys appears to stunt
    imaginative thinking.  Teachers report that children in our electronic
    society are becoming alarmingly deficient in generating their own images
    and ideas.
    
    *
    * Do computers really "connect" children to the world?
    *
    
    Too often, what computers actually connect children to are trivial games,
    inappropriate adult material, and aggressive advertising.  They can also
    isolate children, emotionally and physically, from direct experience of
    the natural world.  The "distance" education they promote is the opposite
    of what all children, and especially children at risk, need most -- close
    relationships with caring adults.
    
    Research shows that strengthening bonds between teachers, students, and
    families is a powerful remedy for troubled students and struggling
    schools.  Overemphasizing technology can weaken those bonds.  The National
    Science Board reported in 1998 that prolonged exposure to computing
    environments may create "individuals incapable of dealing with the
    messiness of reality, the needs of community building, and the demands of
    personal commitments."
    
    In the early grades, children need live lessons that engage their hands,
    hearts, bodies, and minds -- not computer simulations.  Even in high
    school, where the benefits of computers are more clear, too few technology
    classes emphasize the ethics or dangers of online research and
    communication.  Too few help students develop the critical skills to make
    independent judgments about the potential for the Internet -- or any other
    technology -- to have negative as well as positive social consequences.
    
    Our Conclusion: Those who place their faith in technology to solve the
    problems of education should look more deeply into the needs of children.
    The renewal of education requires personal attention to students from good
    teachers and active parents, strongly supported by their communities.  It
    requires commitment to developmentally appropriate education and attention
    to the full range of children's real, low-tech needs -- physical,
    emotional, and social, as well as cognitive.
    
    Therefore, we call for:
    
    1:  A refocusing in education, at home and school, on the essentials of a
    healthy childhood: strong bonds with caring adults; time for spontaneous,
    creative play; a curriculum rich in music and the other arts; reading
    books aloud; storytelling and poetry; rhythm and movement; cooking,
    building things, and other handcrafts; and gardening and other hands-on
    experiences of nature and the physical world.
    
    2:  A broad public dialogue on how the emphasis on computers affects the
    real needs of children, especially children in low-income families.
    
    3:  A comprehensive report by the U.S. Surgeon General on the full extent
    of physical, emotional, and other developmental hazards computers pose to
    children.
    
    4:  Full disclosure by information-technology companies about the physical
    hazards to children of using their products.
    
    5:  A halt to the commercial hyping of harmful or useless technology for
    children.
    
    6:  A new emphasis on ethics, responsibility, and critical thinking in
    teaching older students about the personal and social effects of
    technology.
    
    7:  An immediate moratorium on the further introduction of computers in
    early childhood and elementary education, except for special cases of
    students with disabilities.  Such a time-out is necessary to create the
    climate for the above recommendations to take place.
    
    Signed by:  (Organizations included for identification purposes only.)
    [Editor's note:  this is not the final list of signers.]
    
    Joan Almon, former kindergarten teacher and U.S. coordinator, Alliance for
    Childhood
    
    Jeffrey Anshel, O.D., Corporate Vision Consulting, and author, Visual
    Ergonomics in the Workplace
    
    Alison Armstrong, author, The Child and the Machine: How Computers Put
    Our Children's Education at Risk
    
    Marilyn Benoit, M.D., child and adolescent psychiatrist, Howard University
    Hospital, and president-elect of the American Academy of Child and
    Adolescent Psychiatry (Dr.  Benoit's signature, as noted above, does not
    reflect an endorsement of this statement by the academy.)
    
    Margit L. Bleecker, M.D., Ph.D., neurologist, specialist in repetitive
    stress injuries, and director, Center for Occupational and Environmental
    Neurology in Baltimore
    
    Hank Bromley, Ph.D., associate professor of education and director, Center
    for the Study of Technology in Education, State University of New York at
    Buffalo; editor, Education/Technology/Power: Education Computing as a
    Social Practice
    
    Chet Bowers, educator and author, Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect
    Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological
    Sustainability, and The Culture of Denial: Why the Environmental Movement
    Needs a Strategy for Reforming Universities and Public Schools
    
    Sandra Campbell, researcher on computers in education, and the role of the
    arts and imagination in positive social learning; and educational
    consultant, Viva Associates
    
    Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and author of The Tao of Physics, and
    Web of Life
    
    Ian Chunn, program director, Centre for Distance Education, Simon Fraser
    University
    
    Rhonda Clements, Ed.D., President, The American Association for the
    Child's Right to Play
    
    Brendan Connell, student, Harvard University (Mr. Connell developed
    repetitive stress injuries related to computer use while a student at
    Blair High School in Montgomery County, MD)
    
    Colleen Cordes, writer, co-coordinator of Task Force on Computers in
    Childhood, Alliance for Childhood
    
    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management and
    director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate
    University, and author, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
    
    Larry Cuban, Ph.D., professor of education, Stanford University, and
    former president, the American Educational Research Association
    
    O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D., play specialist, Moreno Valley Unified School
    District
    
    Hubert L. Dreyfus, professor of philosophy, University of California at
    Berkeley, and author, On the Internet: Nihilism on Line (in press)
    
    Elliot Eisner, Lee Jacks professor of education and professor of art at
    Stanford University; former president of the American Educational Research
    Association, the National Art Education Association, and the International
    Society for Education Through Art; and author, The Kind of Schools We Need
    
    Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., Ph.D., Herbert I. Schiller professor of communication
    at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
    Pennsylvania
    
    Simson L. Garfinkel, chief technology officer, Sandstorm Enterprises,
    Inc., and author, Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st
    Century
    
    Claire Ryle Garrison, director, Whole Child Initiative, State of the World
    Forum
    
    John Taylor Gatto, former New York State Teacher of the Year, and author,
    Dumbing Us Down, and The Underground History of American Education: A
    School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern
    Schooling (in press)
    
    Chellis Glendinning, Ph.D., psychologist and author, When Technology
    Wounds
    
    Jane Goodall, Ph.D., primate researcher and founder, Jane Goodall
    Institute -- U.K.
    
    Harold Howe II, retired educator, former U.S. Commissioner of Education
    and vice president of Ford Foundation for Education, Harvard education
    faculty
    
    Philip Incao, M.D., primary care physician and founder, Colorado Alliance
    for Childhood
    
    Henry C. Johnson, Jr., Ph.D., professor emeritus in education theory and
    policy, Pennsylvania State University
    
    Jeffrey Kane, Ph.D., dean, School of Education, C.W. Post Campus, Long
    Island University, and editor, Education, Information and Transformation:
    Essays on Learning and Thinking
    
    Stephen Kline, Ph.D., professor in the School of Communication, Simon
    Fraser University, and author, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and
    Children's Culture in the Age of Marketing
    
    Diane Levin, Ph.D., professor of education, Wheelock College, and author,
    Remote Control Childhood
    
    Susan Linn, Ed.D., associate director, the Media Center at Judge Baker
    Children's Center, and instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
    
    Jerry Mander, program director, Foundation for Deep Ecology; president,
    International Forum on Globalization; and author, In the Absence of the
    Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
    
    Bill McKibben, author of The Age of Missing Information
    
    Deborah W. Meier, principal, Mission Hill School, Boston Public Schools
    
    Edward Miller, Ed.M., educational policy analyst, former editor of the
    Harvard Education Letter, and co-coordinator, Task Force on Computers in
    Childhood, Alliance for Childhood
    
    Marita Moll, researcher and analyst of educational-technology policies,
    and author, Tech High; Globalization and the Future of Canadian Education
    
    Lowell Monke, Ph.D., former award-winning teacher of advanced technology
    classes in the Des Moines Public Schools and former member of Des Moines'
    Technology Steering Committee, now assistant professor of education,
    Wittenberg University; co-author, Breaking Down the Digital Walls:
    Learning to Teach in a Post-Modem World (in press)
    
    Thomas Moore, former psychotherapist and author, Care of the Soul: A
    Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
    
    David Noble, Ph.D., professor of social science, York University, and
    author, "Digital Diploma Mills" and The Religion of Technology
    
    Douglas Noble, Ph.D., senior research associate, SUNY-Geneseo, and author,
    The Classroom Arsenal: Military Research, Information Technology, and
    Public Education
    
    David Orr, Ph.D., chair, Environmental Studies Program at Oberlin College,
    and author, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment and the Human
    Prospect
    
    Maria Papadakis, Ph.D., director, Institute for the Social Assessment of
    Information Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
    University. (Dr. Papadakis was the author of Chapter Eight: Economic and
    Social Significance of Information Technologies, for the U.S. National
    Science Board's official biennial report, Science & Engineering Indicators
    -- 1998. The chapter summarized the research on the impacts of information
    technology on K-12 student learning.)
    
    Mary Pipher, Ph.D., psychologist and author, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the
    Selves of Adolescent Girls, and The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our
    Families
    
    Neil Postman, Ph.D., chair, Department of Culture and Communications, New
    York University, and author, Technopoly, The End of Education: Redefining
    the Value of School, and The Disappearance of Childhood
    
    Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., director, the Media Center at Judge Baker
    Children's Center and clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical
    School
    
    Deborah Quilter, RSI prevention consultant and author, The Repetitive
    Strain Injury Recovery Book
    
    Raffi, singer, founder, the Troubadour Institute
    
    Diane Ravitch, Ph.D., research professor, New York University, and former
    assistant secretary of education, responsible for the U.S. Office of
    Educational Research and Improvement
    
    Beth Rosenberg, consumer technology journalist, especially on issues
    involving young children and CD-ROMs
    
    Theodore Roszak, Ph.D., professor of history, California State University-
    Hayward, and author of The Cult of Information
    
    Rustum Roy, Ph.D., Evan Pugh professor of the solid state and director of
    the Science, Technology, and Society programs, Penn State University
    
    Gary Ruskin, M.P.P., director, Commercial Alert
    
    Dorothy St. Charles, leadership specialist for the Milwaukee Public
    Schools and former principal
    
    Barry Sanders, Ph.D., professor of English and history of ideas, Pitzer
    College and author of A is for Ox:  The Collapse of Literacy and the
    Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age
    
    Richard Sclove, Ph.D., M.S., founder, The Loka Institute, and author,
    Democracy and Technology
    
    David Shenk, author of Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut;
    and The End of Patience: Cautionary Notes on the Information
    Revolution
    
    Douglas Sloan, Ph.D., professor of history and education, Teachers
    College, Columbia University and editor of The Computer in Education: A
    Critical Perspective
    
    Clifford Stoll, Ph.D., astronomer and author, High Tech Heretic and
    The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
    (October, 2000)
    
    Stephen Talbott, senior researcher, The Nature Institute, and editor of
    NetFuture, an online newsletter on technology and human responsibility
    
    Betsy Taylor, executive director, Center for a New American Dream
    
    Frank Vespe, executive director, TV-Turnoff Network
    
    Joseph Weizenbaum, Ph.D., professor emeritus of computer science,
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author, Computer Power and
    Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation
    
    Frank R. Wilson, M.D., medical director, Health Program for Performing
    Artists, University of California at San Francisco, and author, The Hand:
    How It's Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
    
    Langdon Winner, Ph.D., professor of political science at Rensselaer
    Polytechnic Institute and author, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for
    Limits in an Age of High Technology, and Autonomous Technology
    
    Pei-hsuan Wu, lab manager and technology assistant, Saint Mark's School,
    San Rafael, CA
    
    Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D., professor of physics, Amherst College, and author,
    Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind, and co-author,
    The Quantum Challenge: Modern Research on the Foundations of Quantum
    Mechanics
    
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    ==========================================================================
    
                           ANNOUNCEMENTS AND RESOURCES
    
    
    Alliance for Childhood -- International Conference
    --------------------------------------------------
    
    A large-scale conference on "The Rights of Children -- A Bridge to the
    Future" will be held October 11-14 in Brussels, Belgium.  Organized by the
    Alliance for Childhood and sponsored by a long list of European
    organizations that are Alliance "partners", the conference is founded upon
    this shared concern:
    
       The environment in which our children live is under threat and needs to
       be protected .... Do we not ... need a new global consciousness of the
       right to childhood .... Hasn't the time come to form a worldwide lobby
       on behalf of children, who cannot do this for themselves?
    
    The conference features an impressive array of speakers on topics related
    to child development, children's rights, medical issues (addictions,
    attention deficit disorder), family life, technology, violence, play, and
    various other topics.
    
    For further information, contact:
    
       Alliance for Childhood
       p/a Lange Lozanastraat 117
       B-2018 Antwerpen
       Phone:  03/2378710
       Fax:    03/2571654
       Email:  internatalliance.childhood@online.be
    
    
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    ==========================================================================
    
                              ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
    
    Copyright 2000 by The Nature Institute.  You may redistribute this
    newsletter for noncommercial purposes.  You may also redistribute
    individual articles in their entirety, provided the NetFuture url and this
    paragraph are attached.
    
    NetFuture is supported by freely given reader contributions, and could not
    survive without them.  For details and special offers, see
    http://netfuture.org/support.html .
    
    Current and past issues of NetFuture are available on the Web:
    
        http://netfuture.org/
    
    To subscribe or unsubscribe to NetFuture:
        http://netfuture.org/subscribe.html.
    
    Steve Talbott :: NetFuture #111 :: September 12, 2000
    
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